Tagore is pre-eminently a social reformer. As adherents of the Brahmo Samaj, both he and his people have broken away from caste, purdah and the spirit of religious insularity. He finds it difficult to believe that caste and nationality are compatible with each other. Politics aim at national solidarity : caste makes for endless distinctions. A great national unification implies, therefore, a great revolt against caste trammels, a strong impulse towards reconciliation of conflicting interests, the mutual composing of differences, rhythmic heart-beats as the result of engaging in common pursuits as brothers, co-equals. In India, caste is the greatest obstruction in the pathway of reform.
" When I realise the hypnotic hold which this gigantic system of cold-blooded repression has taken on the minds of our people, whose social body it has so completely entwined in its endless coils that the free expression of manhood, under the direst necessity, has become almost an impossibility, the only remedy that suggests itself to me is to educate them out of their trance. . . . If to break up the feudal system, and the tyrannical convention alism of the medieval church, which had outraged the healthier instincts of humanity, Europe needed the thought impulse of the Renaissance and the fierce struggle of the Reformation, do we not need in a greater degree an overwhelming influx of higher social ideas before a place can be found for true political thinking ? Must we not have that greater vision of humanity which will impel us to shake off the fetters that shackle our individual life before we begin to think of national freedom ? His vision of his country's future is such as to hold the imagination in thrall.
" Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, Where knowledge is free, Where the world has not been broken up by narrow domestic walls, Where words come out from the depth of truth, Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way in the dreary desert sand of dead habit, Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action— Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake ! " Since Tagore is the poet of the Renaissance, his millennium is not in the past. And yet no living poet could set greater store by the past traditions and culture of India than he. He is Indian to the backbone, and since he is proud of being an Indian, New India is proud of him. His gospel is that of self-respect, self-reliance and national self-realisation.
It is not difficult to understand his national fervour when we bear in mind that a keen sense of nationality is characteristic even of men with world-wide sympathies. Tagore believes in India : a nation. And yet this nation is not to cut itself off from the main currents of modern thought, or isolate itself from the spiritual acquisitions of sister nations, nor yet is India to delude herself with the belief that mere trading on the past would lead to aught but moral degeneracy. But, at the same time, in the spiritual federation of nations, India, according to him, should occupy a place of honour as the Mother of Nations. And who could urge this plea with greater consistency and authority than the poet-prophet of the Indian Renaissance, who, by his literary contributions and an eminently useful and irreproachable life, has enhanced the status of India in the eyes of the intellectual world ? Tagore's evangel is : " cultivate the spirit of invincible optimism ; believe in life ; live worthy of life." W. B. Yeats endorses this with a statement from someone who asserts that Tagore is the first Indian poet who has not " refused to live." But in not " refusing to live " Tagore has not only benefited India but has placed in some measure the whole religious world (including Christendom) under a deep obligation. For the bane of the religious life in the past has been a morbid, too overbearing sense of sin, a depressing concentration on the inherent vileness of human interests and attachments, a sense of the remoteness of God from the arena of mundane interests, and a persistent pursuit of " the soul's salvation " instead of the soul's enrich ment through service and love.
" In this laborious world of Thine, tumultuous with toil and with struggle, Among hurrying crowds, shall I stand before Thee, face to face ? And when my work shall be done in this world, 0 King of Kings, alone and speechless shall I stand before Thee, face to face ? " " Thus it is that Thy joy in me is so full. Thus it is that Thou hast come down to me. 0 Thou Lord of all heavens, where would be Thy love if I were not ? Thou hast taken me as Thy partner of all this wealth. In my heart is the endless play of Thy delight. In my heart Thy will is ever taking shape." Tagore's intense religious mysticism, combined with buoyant joy in life's varied interests, produces a resultant patriotism which is chastened with a sense of limitation and yet is audacious and progressive in its design.